Lightroom Import Error... "Files are too big"???

[Xia_Ke]

So I was scanning some negatives tonight and came across with this error. I was scanning some MF at 4800, 16 bit grayscale, and saving as a TIFF. Granted the files were 191MB each...LOL It's not a big deal since I was just farting around and really have no need for a scan that big but, anyone know what the size limit is for importing into Lightroom?

Aaron

btw- it's version 1.4.1

[Greg McCary]

You must have a very fast processor. I scanned at a high res like that. Not quite that big. Mine was 96 meg and my computer slowed almost to a halt. I don't think I put it in LR though.

[Xia_Ke]

I dunno. Not really that fast. It's a 2 year old Compaq laptop with a 1.8GHz AMD Turion 64 and 1GB RAM.

[Medley]

Not sure it's a file size issue per se. Lightroom 1.4 has a pixel dimension limit of 10,000 pixels per side. That has been raised to 30,000 pixels in Lightroom 2.0.

Could this be the problem?

- Joe U.

[Xia_Ke]

Yep, that's what it was. Thx Medley. I resized to 9,999 pixels and it loaded. Let me tell you though, Lightroom was not too happy...LOL Photoshop handled the file fine but, it made Lightroom SSSLLLLOOOOOWWWWWWWWWWW to say the least.

[drg]

I'm sure slow is an understatement. That big a file on even a multi-processor machine is not very fast! 10,000 pix is indeed the current limit, and what ADOBE will do in the next major release of LR is not really known. The beta releases have not always been the best indicator, certainly as early as we are in LR 2.0.

The other issue you should be aware of is that 4800 dpi for film is overkill. Beyond 3000 dpi and you are scanning noise, or the scanner is 'resizing' for you. The finest grain chrome breaks down around 2200+ dpi. There have been some b/w films that in certain large format emulsions that you could get meaninful detail at close to 3000dpi but the scanners were huge and very expensive. Some of this film was for aerial photography and I don't know of a current manufactured film that approachs this quality that is easily available.

Some scanners use a higher dpi as they add up the scans for each color to give you a bigger file, but that's different. Some format it incorrectly or use an alternative TIF representation that is built for color separation, i.e. 6000dpi is really a 2000 dpi(pixel) scan. It will show you a big resized file, but the detail isn't there.

More later.